How contact center employee engagement can increase productivity and reduce agent turnover

After onboarding and developing your contact center agents, it’s time to drive employee engagement to boost productivity and deliver a better customer experience.

Now that you have successfully onboarded your agents and deployed an effective development strategy, it’s time to think about the final—and some would say the most important—step. You’ve invested time and resources turning your tenured agents into highly effective customer service professionals. You need to protect that investment by retaining them long term with the right strategy to keep them engaged, happy, and highly productive.

According to SHRM, “when a significant number of your employees are long-tenured, they know their jobs well and are highly productive, which frees up time and resources for innovation and growth.” However, research from Harvard Business Review suggests that “the employees with the longest tenures in your company are also the least likely to be engaged.”

High contact center employee turnover affects the customer experience.

When employee turnover takes place, it reduces morale and places additional strain on your remaining staff until you’re able to hire replacements. Even if you’re able to backfill roles quickly, hiring is expensive and a high rate of turnover reduces the average competency of your workforce, as new hires take time to gain the knowledge and skills they need. The result? A worse experience for your customers and higher operational expenses for your contact center.

There are a number of techniques you can go through to keep your long-tenured workforce engaged and reduce turnover as much as possible. At this point, employees will be looking for a strong community, lower stress levels, increased flexibility, opportunities to advance, and strong alignment with the company mission.